Life has an interesting way of surprising you. I started strongly pursuing my business and life mission when things came to a halt. Actually, they didn't halt… they burned to the ground. And they burned quickly…

It all started just over 2 years ago… I had been grieving over multiple losses, I moved, my daughter got an immune disease, an organization that I built from the ground up started to crumble because I was the last leader left and couldn't hold it alone, and my business was crying for more of my attention. . This was also at the time that I was birthing my new business and following my passion so it was also an exciting time. And then I found out I was pregnant. I get pre-eclampsia with my pregnancy and have to be on bedrest early on . Then even more difficult challenges piled on… and I felt completely broken. I hadn't gone to those depths for years and didn't think I could ever revisit them again But I did

I could feel myself shifting and I was quickly simplifying everything in my life. I shut down the organization, sold my business, purged items out of my house, canceled things on my calendar, eliminated SIX different websites and said no to almost everything. I pulled back to the bare essentials and regrouped.

And then I re emerged.

I found it ironic that my theme for that previous year was FEARLESS and FORWARD because the new energy I felt was exactly that.

I am excited to share the things I learned during that time. I am here to testify that the tools I learned to combat darkness not only WORK but they were probably life saving at times.

So what does this mean for my websites? Well, here's the exciting thing. I am combining them all into ONE. Although this domain (www.martinamuir.com) was for my personal blog, it will now be the home of my business and healing services, books, classes, The Light Plan, and more.

It will get an incredible face lift… so professional yet beautiful. BRIGHT and BOLD yet INSPIRING and WARM!

While studying God's word this morning I stumbled across the term "man is an agent unto himself". I had just finished my morning prayer and consulting God about what I should be focusing on. I have been feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the things I feel like I "should" be doing and so I symbolically dropped everything and promised God that I would only add the things he wanted me to. Here's the strange part… Within a few short hours of me dropping "everything' I had 5 different people come to me and offer their insight into how I should spend my time and earn money. All of their ideas were fantastic and they each seemed so sure that their inspiration was what I should choose to focus my time on.

At first I was stumped. Did God really want me to do ALL these things? Surely not! Then why would all of these great opportunities and ideas come to me at that moment?

So this is what was revealed to me…

Man is free. We are free to choose! Our daily mundane life might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but they are VERY important to us… thus being important to God. We are his children and he is teaching us how to govern with him in heaven. Just like when I see my child learning to responsible for something. I don't think it is a small and insignificant task… to THEM I treat it with the same importance as I would a larger one. This is because I want them to learn how to do it properly so they can then apply it to bigger life experiences.

Isn't that a wonderful concept to know that our Father in Heaven loves us so much that he is willing to listen and guide us in the most [seemingly] trivial parts of life. He cares about us, He loves us, and He wants us to succeed.

There are a few things he teaches us that we need to understand…

1. All things that are good come from God. This can be tricky and the term "Good, Better, Best" comes to mind. What if we are living in a way that we have a lot of good things we can choose from? We can get distracted with all the good things and never do the best! God is testing us at this point to make sure we are using our agency to choose the BEST things.

2. He has given us the ability to judge righteously. We must search in the Light of Christ with the Holy Spirit to discern what choices are in alignment with God's will.

3. All things that are good come from God. Thus, we need to exercise our agency and CHOOSE the BEST choice with what we have been given.

4. We must confess his hand in all things and have gratitude. "In nothing is the Lord's anger kindled than confessing not his hand in all things".

5. We must have faith. Faith is actually an action item. Our FAITH (and gratitude) actually assists that item to come to pass. Our faith propels it, and fuels it, and helps it come into the physical realm.

6. It does not please our Father if we do not make any choice until we are commanded. And then if we receive a command and then have a doubtful heart, and not do it (by being slothful) we will receive bigger consequences for our lack of faith and lack of follow through.

So there I was…

an empty vessel just waiting to be filled. I was waiting for God to tell me what I should do but instead he taught me to study my options, decide what would be in the best interest of myself and my family and then ask if I made the right decision.

Are you wondering what I chose?

Well, I made the decision to focus more on my family and completing a few inspired projects that I've been too distracted to finish and then do more in a few months. I told these inspired individuals that "I love the idea but it's not the right time for me to work on that right now". They were fine with it, and I was freed from any guilt. After I made those decisions I felt a renewed sense of focus, determination, and energy!! This confirmed that as we ultimately do what God wants us to do, we will be greatly blessed!!

I had the pleasure of being the guest on a talk radio show "All You Need To Know". The show is all about preparedness, but we discussed how making good choices can prevent us with dealing with harder consequences later…. and this is a GREAT aspect of preparation.

As I was discussing this show with my mom she shared with me a perfect example of this. When my mom was younger she worked in a jewelery store. Because of the high-dollar items in the store she had always made a plan in her head in case someone tried to rob her. She carefully outlined all the options she had and things she could do to make sure that it didn't happen. One day there was a man who came in and asked to see the most expensive jewelery in both mens and womens. It was a little suspicious so my mom made eye contact with the security guard to let him know that he should be on his toes (this is one of the things she had thought about before). Well, sure enough when the man got a hold of the jewelery, he took off running. My mom screamed for the guard and immediately the thief was tackled to the ground. My mom felt strongly that if she hadn't played that out the possibilities ahead of time in her mind then the man would have gotten away and my mom would have been frozen in fear.

So I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Can you think of a time in your life where a difficult experience could have been avoided if you had planned… or prepared yourself ahead of time?